John: The Other Teaching Responsibilities

I have just completed the week of inservice at my school. I appreciated all of the uninterrupted time in my classroom to prepare my room and my materials for the upcoming year. I am excited about implementing many of the new ideas I have for my classes.

One new idea that my wife gave me is using desktops as dry erase boards. Who knew you could use dry erase markers on desktops and wipe them off easily with wet wipes? Call me easily amused, but I thought this little known secret was one of the coolest teacher tricks I had heard in a long time. I thought it must be too good to be true so I went to Google to see if the internet had any wisdom regarding dry erase markers and desktops. Come to find out, lots of people out there have successfully used dry erase markers on desktops. Still a little nervous about ruining my room’s desks, I drew a tiny dot on a desktop, and to my surprise, the dot wiped off easily! I now have all kinds of ideas for using dry erase markers in my class this year. I think students will love this idea because of the novelty it presents.

Enough about the dry erase markers, I know. One thing inservice week has reminded me of is all the other tasks that go along with teaching. When someone grows up and decides he wants to be a teacher, he means he wants to influence young people, he wants to impart a passion for a particular subject, or he wants to make a difference in the world in some way. Whatever a person’s reason for becoming a teacher, typically the reason revolves around time spent in the classroom pursuing something bigger than any one person.

In reality being a teacher involves so much more than what we might call “teaching.” So far this week, I have made multiple bulletin boards, deep-cleaned my classroom, altered the seating arrangement, set up and connected four student computers in my room, reserved the technology I will need for my classroom (I am planning on using an iPad and document camera much more this year.), and paperwork, paperwork, paperwork! This list doesn’t even include my exploding IEP caseload, the five IEP meetings scheduled for students transferring to my school, and the three other IEP meetings I have held already.

I can easily get discouraged with these other tasks that are part of the job, but it is in these mundane tasks that I have to remember why I became a teacher in the first place. One of the best things for me is to bookend the extraneous tasks with things that I would consider actual “teaching” preparation: planning the semester, developing lessons, and searching for new, creative ways to present information.

Here is where the dry erase markers fit. In the middle of a week void of students and full of taxing responsibilities, I found something that excited me, something that I think will excite my students, and something that got my mind churning with all the possibilities for lessons with my students.

For new teachers, what surprised you most about the tasks you would have outside of teaching? How do you experienced teachers get through the extraneous responsibilities teachers have?

Comments

[John]

@Kelsey Thanks for the comment and encouragement. Student teaching can be overwhelming! The paperwork is good practice for teaching. I had a lot of people tell me that a lot of the work in student teaching is stuff that you would never have to do once you have your own classroom, but you really use the things you learn in student teaching if your are advocating best practices in your teaching career.

[Kelsey]

I really thought that the dry erase markers where a good idea! I can really see students enjoying that! I love your view on teaching as knowing that you are going to influence the lives of young people, I think it's good to always keep why we want to be teachers in mind when we are doing out day to day work. I am just getting into my student teaching and the amount of paperwork is something that really has me worried. I think you bring up a good point that we must remember why we started teaching.

[John]

@the big three ww2 Thanks for the encouragement! I appreciate the feedback.

[John]

@Alley you'll have to let me know how your students like writing on their desks. Mine love it.

I completely understand what you mean with all the meetings. I am so appreciative for my principal being very sensitive to our time and not planning tons of meetings in our free time. I always smile when people ask if I enjoy being done with work at 3:30 because, as you know, we are rarely done by then. :)

[Alley Chai]

I am currently student teaching in a local elementary school in a first and second grade students with disabilities and I LOVE the idea of using the desks as whiteboards. For my students this would be a huge help for them in learning how to write their names, the letters of the alphabet, numbers, as well as learning to draw shapes. I cannot wait to try this out. This is one of those moments that reminds teachers why they got into teaching in the first place. Yes, there are a lot of tasks that go along with teaching that are not always fun and exciting, but, when teachers find creative ways to get kids involved in their own learning, it makes all of those tasks worth it.

For me, the tasks outside of teaching that surprised me the most was the amount of meetings teachers have to attend while it is their supposed "set-up and preparation" time. On the teacher's first day back at school we attended a five hour faculty meeting, on the second day we attended a district-wide special education meeting for four hours, and finally on the third day had an entire day to set-up the classroom and prepare for the next day, which would be the student's first day. It made me realize that, even though teachers have so many responsibilities besides just teaching, the district and state don't always allow teachers to use their time wisely for those responsibilities. I would hope that this is something that needs to change in the future.

[the big three ww2]

Wow that sounds cool! I've never heard of desktops being used as boards. This will make you an extraordinary teacher and a teacher whom students will look forward too. An advanced development in teaching is a huge change that I think is needed in today's world because students today need motivation to be interested in listening to lectures. Your upcoming strategy will be effective for sure.

[John]

Elizabeth, I can completely sympathize with the growing pains of IEPs. Last year, one of the special education teachers at my school went on maternity leave during IEP season. I was given half of her caseload that I had to write IEPs for and hold the annual review meetings. I ended up holding over 40 meetings. I think we could have a blog dedicated to IEPs and the accompanying difficulties.

[Elizabeth U.]

When I was in college, we were taught the basics of IEPs but we were never taught with the program our county uses. All the errors and issues were hard to deal with. One transition meeting could take hours if the parents decided to change anything already entered. Also,all of the extraneous paperwork involved with our county....we weren't taught any of that either. I'm in my second year and I'm finally getting comfortable ... the only bad thing is that I'm not in ESE...